Beauty and the Beast

To Regret Or Not To Regret

Silke,
You would be ashamed of me if you knew what I've just done. You see, sometimes I myself don't understand the things I do.
For example, I don't know why I still write to you. You will never see, let alone read these letters. Maybe it's because deep down I've never let you go. Unlike so many other people I've known in the past, unlike so many friendships and relationships I've had to let slowly ebb away, you are the only one that stayed.
Believe me, I've tried my best to forget about you. But my best efforts have failed so far. Over the many months I've come to terms with the fact that maybe it's meant to be. Maybe you're meant to stay locked away in the dark recesses of my heart and mind, dormant most of the time but resurfacing every now and then.
I can imagine your reaction about the Czech girl. I've known you long enough to be able to hold imaginary conversations with you in my head and be able to imagine, quite accurately, what your responses would be.
You would be beyond furious now. I've only seen you like that once, when you came to the bar we usually rendezvoused at sometime during our courtship, back when I was a naval cadet. You were upset that your father had scolded you about skipping school for the fifteenth time that month in front of your relatives. I suppose neither of us had the heart to point out that the only reason you had even contemplated doing something like that was to see me. It was minutes before I could get you to talk to me and tell me what was the matter. You sat next to me in stony silence with your head bowed and your shoulders hunched, a foaming mug of beer between your clenched fists, your hair hiding your face like a curtain.

You'd probably do the same thing now. I can picture the scene--you'll be sitting on a chair across from me at my desk, staring at me as I tell you what happened in that darkened room last night. I'll try to infuse my story with as much detail as possible. I'll tell you how savagely happy I was when my men brought in the Czech girl. I'll tell you how she begged me to reconsider what I was doing, or not to do it at all. I can imagine the disgust slowly spreading over your face like a tidal wave.

You'll look up  at me when I mention how she called me by my name, my first name. Yes, my first name. Not 'Heydrich' or 'Herr Obergruppenfuhrer'--Reinhard. You're the only person apart from my immediate family who has ever called me 'Reinhard'--and even then, you only call me 'Reinhard' when you're angry with me or when we were in public. Aside from that, it is--and has always been--'Reini.'

I'll ask you if maybe she thought that by referring to me so familiarly, she was trying to convince me not to kill the piece of shit I had unintentionally spawned inside of her. In your anger, you'd probably just glare at me. I'll tell you to be reasonable; the child would have had Czech blood in it and would be unfit for the Reich. Better it dies now, at the hands of its illegitimate father, than in the death camps.

I've never killed someone with my own hands before. I suppose I have ordered the deaths of people, and have the blood of millions of Untermensch people on my hands, but it's all a sacrifice for the greater good. Those 'murders', which I'm sure you'd immediately label them as such,were committed from the security of my office. At this point, I imagine that you'd call me a coward. No, that isn't cowardice. Anything other than that is an excess and is sadism.

The sound the weight I held in my hands made as I slammed it into her stomach once, twice,three times sounded disgusting and hollow. It was all I could do to keep going and not keel over to one side and retch. It was the sound of death, the sound of tiny,delicate bones being shattered, the sound of  tendons and ligaments being crushed to nothing. The wet thunk that accompanied each blow seemed to echo twice as loud inside my head. I began to slam the weight down harder, faster, trying to get the sound out of my head, trying to block it out. It didn't work. It only grew louder, more insistent and encompassing.

At this point, I'd assume you wouldn't want to hear anymore. You would hurl some choice insults at me and rise, standing up so fast the chair would rock on its wooden legs if not clatter to the floor. I'd stand with you, walking after you to the door, entreating you to be reasonable, to hear me out, all the while knowing deep down that there was nothing to hear out, no reason for  you to stay. I'd  pull myself up short at the doorway and watch the door close firmly behind you, and listen to the staccato of your heeled shoes on the tiled floors of the hallway get farther and farther away, until they were just a faint echo, and then they would fade away forever.

I wish I could talk to you now. I wish you could know that beneath the notorious "Hangman Heydrich" and the "Butcher of Prague", there still remains a vestige of the old Reinhard Heydrich, the naval cadet you knew and loved.

Oh, well. One doesn't always get what one wants in life.

With endless love,

Your Reinhard